'Exactly,' Malcolm agreed. 'So there's only one course for you to follow. You have to discredit him. You have to prove to these followers of his that he is a cheat and a liar and a thief.'
'We managed to do it in Clonmel,' Horace said.
'We caught him unawares there, with the legend of the Sunrise Warrior. And we tricked him into pinning everything on trial by combat. He won't fall for that again. This time, we'll have to do something new. Something he's not expecting.'
'Like what?' Will asked and Halt gave that tired smile again.
'When I think of it, you'll be the first to know.' Forty-three The abandoned camp told them little that they didn't already know. They walked through the areas of flattened grass where tents had been pitched, inspected the blackened circles left by a score of small cook fires and examined the small items that had been discarded or forgotten – a shoe here with a broken strap and holes in the underside that were past repairing, a rusted cook pot, a broken knife. And, of course, food scraps and garbage that had been hastily buried and dug up once more by foxes after the people had left.
The ground was soft and there were still footprints in evidence round the camp. These showed that a reasonable proportion of the people who had stopped here had been women.
'All the more reason to believe these are converts,' Halt said.
Malcolm agreed, but raised a further point. 'Still, women or not, a hundred people is rather a large handful for the four of us to take on. Do you have any ideas how we're going to handle that task?'
'Simple,' Halt told him. 'We'll surround them.'
And he said it with such a straight face that, for a moment, Malcolm actually thought he was serious.
There was one item of interest to be found and that was the direction Tennyson and his newly augmented band of followers had taken when they broke camp and departed. After several weeks of travelling consistently to the southeast, Tennyson now swung to the left, heading due east. The small party gathered round Halt as he unfolded his chart of the area. He indicated a range of hills marked on the map, a day's journey away to the east.
'Looks as if he's heading for these hills – as we thought.'
Horace, craning to read the map over his shoulder, read the notation on the map where Halt was pointing. 'Caves,' he said.
Halt looked up and nodded. 'Those old sandstone cliffs and hills will be honeycombed with them, according to what it says here.'
Malcolm asked to see the map and when Halt handed it over he studied it for some minutes, tracing a path with his finger here, frowning as he read a notation there. Finally, he looked up at Halt.
'This is quite amazing,' he said. 'There's so much detail here. How did you come by this?'
Halt smiled and took the map back and folded it carefully.
'It's part of what the Ranger Corps does,' he told the healer. 'For the past twenty-five years or so, we've kept ourselves busy updating maps of the Kingdom. Each Ranger is responsible for his own area of operations and we send updated charts to Crowley each year. He has them copied and distributed.'
Malcolm nodded. 'Ah yes, I know Crowley. He contacted me shortly after Will spent time with us. He was interested to know more about my healing practices.'
'He said he was going to do that,' Will put in. He remembered telling Halt and Crowley about Malcolm during his debriefing session. They were interested in the healer's medical skills – and the other skills of deception and illusion that he had demonstrated. Knowing Malcolm, Will had been confident that he would share his medical skills with them, but not the other skills, which were his alone.
'In any event,' Halt said, bringing matters back to the present, 'I'd wager this is where Tennyson is heading.'
'Yes,' Malcolm agreed. 'If he's planning to set up a headquarters and add to his band of followers, a nice cave complex would be as good a place as any.'
'Well, standing here isn't going to get us any closer to him,' Halt said. 'We've given him too much of a lead already.'
He strode back to where Abelard waited for him and mounted quickly. Then he waited impatiently while the others followed his example. Will noticed him fidgeting with his reins as he watched Malcolm make two unsuccessful attempts to mount behind Horace.
'For god's sake, Horace,' Halt finally cried out. 'Can't you just haul him up behind you?'
'Take it easy,' Will said softly.
Halt looked at him quickly, then gave him a shamefaced smile. 'Sorry,' he said. 'It's just that after all these delays, I'm anxious to catch up with him.'
But it was that very anxiety and eagerness to close with Tennyson that eventually let him down. Halt was pushing himself too hard. Under normal circumstances, he would have had no trouble keeping up to the pace he was setting. But he wasn't fully recovered from the effects of the poison, or the days lying close to death in his blankets. Halt had used up a large part of his natural energy reserves and it would take more than a day or two to restore them.
That evening, when they camped, he slid from the saddle and stood, head bowed and exhausted. When Will went to unsaddle and water Abelard, he offered only token resistance.
Will and Horace took care of the minor chores, gathering firewood, building the fire and preparing the meal. Horace even set out Halt's bedroll and blankets for him, laying them out on a small pile of leafy branches that he gathered together. Halt reacted with surprise when he saw it.
'Thanks, Horace,' he said, touched by the young warrior's concern for him.
Horace shrugged. 'Think nothing of it.'
They noticed that when the meal was done, and after the obligatory cups of coffee, Halt didn't linger round the camp fire talking, as he would usually do. He took himself off to his bedroll and slept soundly.
'The sleep of the exhausted,' Malcolm said wryly, eyeing the still figure.
'Is he all right?' Will asked anxiously.
'He's fine, so far as the poison is concerned. But he's working himself too hard. He doesn't have the strength to keep this pace up. See if you can get him to ease up a little.' He knew that if the suggestion came from Will, there was more chance that Halt might take heed. Will wasn't so sure.
'I'll try,' he said.
But the following morning, refreshed by a long night's sleep, Halt wasn't in any mood to take things easily. He fussed and fretted while they had breakfast and packed up their camp. Then he mounted Abelard and set out at a cracking pace.
By eleven that morning, he was swaying in the saddle, his face grey with fatigue, his shoulders slumped. Will rode up beside him, leaned over and seized Abelard's reins, bringing the little horse to a stop. Halt shook himself out of the exhausted daze that had claimed him and looked around in surprise.
'What are you doing?' he asked. 'Let go of my reins!' He tried to pull the reins out of Will's grip but the young Ranger held firm. Abelard neighed in consternation, sensing that all wasn't well with his master.
'Halt, you have to slow down,' Will told him.
'Slow down? Don't talk such nonsense! I'm fine. Now give me back those reins.' Halt tried again to pull the reins from Will's grasp but realised with some surprise that he couldn't break his former apprentice's grip. Abelard, sensing the tension between them, neighed nervously. Then he shook his mane and turned his head so that he could look Halt in the eye. That was something else that surprised Halt. Normally, if someone had grabbed hold of his reins, Abelard would have reacted violently against them. Instead, in this confrontation, he seemed to be taking Will's side.